Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur (версия книг TXT) 📗

When at last he took leave of Welles, the two seamen he had acquired went with him back to the Golden Bough. From his quarterdeck Hal watched the top sails of the Rose of Durham drop below the southern horizon, and days afterwards the hills of Madagascar rise before him out of the north.

That night Hal, as had become his wont, came up on deck at the end of the second dog watch to read the traverse board and speak to the helmsman. Three dark shadows waited for him at the foot of the mainmast.

"Jiri and the others wish to speak to you, Gundwane," Aboli told him.

They clustered about him as he stood by the windward rail. jiri spoke first in the language of the forests. "I was a man when the slavers took me from my home," he told Hal quietly. "I was old enough to remember much more of the land of my birth than these others." He indicated Aboli, Kimatti and Matesi, and all three nodded agreement.

"We were children, "said Aboli.

"In these last days," jiri went on, "when I smelled the land and saw again the green hills, old memories long forgotten came back to me.

I am sure now, in my deepest heart, that I can find my way back to the great river along the banks of which my tribe lived when I was a child."

Hal was silent for a while, and then he asked, "Why do you tell me these things, jiri? Do you wish to return to your own people?"

Jiri hesitated. "It was so long ago. My father and my mother are dead, killed by the slavers. My brothers and the friends of my childhood are gone also, taken away in the chains of the slavers." He was silent awhile, but then he went on, "No, Captain, I cannot return, for you are now my chief as your father was before you, and these are my brothers." He indicated Aboli and the others who stood around him.

Aboli took up the tale. "If Jiri can lead us back to the great river, if we can find our lost tribe, it may well be that we can find also a hundred warriors among them to fill the watch-bill of this ship."

Hal stared at him in astonishment. "A hundred men? Men who can fight like you four rascals? Then, indeed, the stars are smiling upon me again."

He took all four down to the stern cabin, lit the lanterns and spread his charts upon the deck. They squatted around them in a circle, and the black men prodded the parchment sheets with their forefingers and argued softly in their sonorous voices, while Hal explained the lines on the charts to the three who, unlike Aboli, could not read.

When the ship's bell tolled the beginning of the morning watch, Hal went on deck and called Ned Tyler to him. "New course, Mister Tyler. Due south. Mark it on the traverse board."

Ned was clearly astounded at the order to turn back, but he asked no question. "Due south it is."

Hal took pity on him, for it was evident that curiosity itched him like a burr in his breeches. "We're closing the African mainland again."

They crossed the broad channel that separated Madagascar from the African continent. The mainland came up as a low blue smudge on the horizon and, at a good offing, they turned and sailed southwards once more along the coast.

Aboli and jiri spent most of the hours of daylight at the masthead, peering at the land. Twice Jiri came down and asked Hal to stand inshore to investigate what appeared to be the mouth of a large river. Once it turned out to be a false channel and the second time Jiri did not recognize it when they anchored off the mouth. "It is too small. The river I seek has four mouths."

They weighed anchor and worked out to sea again, then went on southwards. Hal was beginning to doubt Jiri's memory but he persevered. Several days later he noticed the patent excitement of the two men at the masthead as they stared at the land and gesticulated to each other. Matesi and Kimatti, who as part of the off-duty watch had been lazing on the forecastle, scrambled to their feet and flew up the shrouds to hang in the rigging and stare avidly at the land.

Hal strode to the rail and raised Llewellyn's brass-bound telescope to his eye. He saw the delta of a great river spread before them. The waters that spilled out from the multiple mouths were discoloured and carried with them the detritus of the swamps and the unknown lands that must lie at the source of this mighty river. Squadrons of sharks were feeding on this waste, and their tall, triangular fins zigzagged across the current.

Hal called Jiri down to him and asked, "What do your tribe call this river?"

"There are many names for it, for the one river comes to the sea as many rivers. They are called Muselo and Inharnessingo and Chinde. But the chief of them is Zambere."

"They all have a noble ring to them," Hal conceded. "But are you certain this is the river serpent with four mouths?" "On the head of my dead father I swear it is."

Hal had two men in the bows taking soundings as he crept inshore, and as soon as the bottom began to shelve steeply he dropped anchor in twelve fathoms. He would not risk the ship in the narrow inland waters and the convoluted channels of the delta. But there was another risk he was unwilling to face.

He knew from his father that these tropical deltas were dangerous to the health of his crew. If they breathed the night airs of the swamp, they would soon fall prey to the deadly fevers that were borne upon them, aptly named the malaria, the bad airs.

Sukeena's saddle-bags, which with her mother's jade brooch were her only legacy to Hal, contained a goodly store of the Jesuit's powder, the extract of the bark of the Cinchona tree. He had also discovered a large jar of the same precious substance among Llewellyn's stores. It was the only remedy against the malaria, a disease that mariners encountered in every known area of the oceans, from the jungles of Batavia and Further India to the canals of Venice, the swamps of Virginia and the Caribbean in the New World.

Hal would not risk his entire crew to its ravages. He ordered the two pinnaces swung up from the hold and assembled. Then he chose the crews for these vessels, which naturally included the four Africans and Big Daniel. He placed a falconer in the bows of each and had a pair of murderers mounted in the stems.